PMO has 'casual approach' towards national security: Subrahmanyam

In a scathing attack on India's political leadership and bureaucracy, Kargil Review Committee chairman K Subrahmanyam on Saturday said blame for the 'casual approach' to national security lay with the prime minister and his immediate advisers who had neglected the working of the National Security Council.

Expressing dissatisfaction that the NSC had 'not even let off its first cry since birth' (in 1998), the defence expert said he was worried that a committee on paper without any activity will prove fatal to future holistic national security management in the country.

''The present stop-go attitude of casual approach to national security in normal times and finger-pointing at the time of crisis has got to change by leadership efforts. Bringing about these attitudinal changes, setting up an appropriate national security planning structure and organising the training of cadres are more difficult tasks than testing nuclear weapons.''

''I am not saying it in a spirit of criticism...I have advocated and campaigned for setting up the NSC for the last 30 years. I would not like to see the experiment fail,'' Mr Subrahmanyam said adding that the vital challenges of bringing about attitudinal changes towards national security and taking steps to get the NSC working had been neglected far too long.

Subrahmanyam was delivering the Field Marshal Cariappa Memorial Lecture, organised by the army in New Delhi on the occasion of Infantry Day. Army Chief Gen S Padmanabhan and senior brass of the three services attended the lecture.

The defence expert said he had gone on record to express his views that it was difficult to do justice to both the offices of the principal secretary to the prime minister and that of the National Security Adviser. Brajesh Mishra holds both posts.

He said if the prime minister chose to have only one person to man both posts the work had to be organised in such a way as to ensure the smooth functioning of the NSC, which though set up in 1998 has not had a formal meeting yet.

''If at the top most political level there is an attitude of casual approach to national security one cannot expect the bureaucracy, parliament, the media and others to pay more meaningful attention to national security except when the issue is used as a political football''.

In a hard-hitting address, Subrahmanyam, who has devoted four decades of his life to advance Indian national security matters in a holistic manner, said secrecy by the bureaucracy, which includes the uniformed community, and a callous political leadership was the root cause for the sorry state of affairs on security matters.

He also said nothing had been done after the draft nuclear doctrine was prepared last year by the National Security Advisory Board of which he was the convenor. Strategies, policies, targeting plans, command and control - all need to be worked out.

It was not enough if the country has nuclear weapons. It should be able to project credible deterrence. A partially visible command and control structure was an essential ingredient in deterrence.

The Kargil Review Committee, Subrahmanyam said, had recommended that the NSC, the senior bureaucracy servicing it and the service chiefs need to be continually sensitised to assess intelligence pertaining to national, regional and international security issues. Therefore, there should be periodic intelligence briefings to the cabinet committee on security, he said.

''There is reluctance both on the part of politicians and the bureaucracy to devote time and effort for this purpose. It is considered adequate if people are briefed when the need arises. Starting
preparations to counter a threat after it has materialised is the surest way of inviting disaster," he said

He said a serious challenge the country faces to its security was the tendency of the political class and media to politicise issues of national security in a partisan manner.

''One can understand our prime ministers keeping the development of nuclear weapon a closely guarded secret. However, when the tests were conducted in May, 1998, it was obvious that the credit for taking the decision to test should go to the ruling coalition, but it could not have developed the weapon in the 53 days it was in office," he said.

The result: Congress indulged in severe criticism when the maximum contribution to
the developments of nuclear weapons were by prime ministers belonging to the party, he pointed out.

He said the politicisation reached its peak during the Kargil conflict and continues to this day with adverse consequences to national security. During the previous wars there were failures of
intelligence as well as of policies but very rarely was the criticism directed against the army and individual officers.

"Our intelligence agencies have not been equipped and oriented towards long term intelligence forecasting. Our foreign service is geared to react to immediate events. Policy planning has never taken off in that ministry," he said.

Subrahmanyam said the country still had to learn that transparency was the best policy and strategy.

Subrahmanyam said the indifference to carry out regular periodic assessment of security threats on part of the country's political class and bureaucracy and communicate it to the nation was at the root of overall insensitivity of the media, academia, parliamentarians and the public at large to the problems of national security. The country's adversaries exploit this mindset, he said.

"It would seem that the political and bureaucratic class of independent India had not drawn any lessons even from the three battles of Panipat, let alone the recent wars of 1948, 1965 and 1971," he said.

According to Subrahmanyam, a corrupt and misgoverned polity was highly vulnerable from the point of national security.